Around July 12, 1918

A young Chinese girl poses in front of a boulder. She is dressed in all black with a tumor the size of a cantaloupe on the right side of her face. Her name is Akae, and she was one of Peter Parker’s many patients during his mission to Canton, China in the 1830s. Parker, an American physician, would treat patients for little to no cost, but his main goal was not to cure their bodies. He wanted...

During the summer of 1916, five people were injured by a Great White Shark along the Jersey Shore area of New Jersey. Four of the victims were bitten while swimming in areas that were not considered to be a hotspot for sharks, and the other victim was bitten while trying to rescue another person. At first, many people had no idea what type of animal could have attacked these people, and journalists...

In 1907, the city of San Francisco wanted to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park by creating a dam to provide water to their city’s increasing population and support urban reform after the devastating 1906 earthquake. John Muir, a leader of environmental preservation activists, was enraged that they would taint this beautiful creation of God with 170 feet of water. He published...

Comtesse Madeleine de Bryas and her sister Jacqueline were born, raised and cultured in Paris. During 1918, the two sisters were in the United States for six months to raise funds for the “American Committee for Devastated France” by giving speeches. While they travelled shore to shore by train they liked America and the American people they met. They had wonderful comments...

Students at Greenville Woman's College often documented their social life in a scrapbook. While many of these books did not stand the test of time or were kept private by future generations, some ended up in the archives of Furman University. One of these scrapbooks belonged to Mary Margaret Walker; born in Greer, South Carolina, Walker attended the College as an undergraduate from 1919 to 1923...

On August 5, 1914, American President William Jennings Bryan and Nicaraguan President Senor General Don Emiliano Chamorro met in Washington D.C. to draw up the Bryan-Chamorro Convention. This convention allowed Nicaragua to cede rights to the United States for the construction of a canal through the Lake of Nicaragua. “Whereas a Convention between the United States of America and the Republic...

The year 1919 marked the United States’s first year out of war since 1914. World War I had been won with the help of an ambitious and aggressive campaign on the home front to overcome wartime shortages through collective action: namely widespread reducing, re-using, and home-producing (such as home-grown produce and canned goods). The nation had looked to its women to take a leading role in...

In 1917 at the annual meeting of the Alabama Medical Association in Mobile Alabama Dr. Partlow stood in front of the committee and said “we have succeeded in getting the legislature to enact into law “The Alabama Mental Deficiency Bill,” which looks to establish of “ The Alabama Home” the for "Feeble-Minded". After 20 years of lobbying and research Alabama found itself in position to...

The opening and subsequent expansion of the Henry Ford Factory in 1903, among many other factors, led to the population of the city of Detroit skyrocketing to one million residents between the years of 1910 and 1920. The rapid expansion of urban populations led to concerns that the remaining farmers would not be able to grow enough to feed them all. Some urban intellectuals suggested that people...

Ada James was a key figure in the women's suffrage movement in Wisconsin. She and her family played an instrumental part in Wisconsin's ratification of the 19th amendment. In one of Ada's diary entry's she stated, "it is unjust to hold mothers responsible for the morals of their children while denying them a voice on municipal conditions making up their environment." Tis quote shows Ada's...